Chapter Text
It came down, in the end, to the most basic of truths. Some are so simple and obvious, and some should have been all along. Emotions get in the way, and so do the facts.
There is clarity to be discovered in the middle of blood and death.
Obsession never dies.
“You're fidgeting a lot today.”
“Can't help it,” Kendall admitted. “If I sit still, my mind starts racing, and I don't know what to do. Or if it isn't my mind racing, then I fall asleep and...”
“You're having nightmares?”
“Every time I close my eyes,” he agreed reluctantly. He'd rather lie. He'd rather not be here right now. They'd almost had it all again, and it felt like it had all slipped away again. The concert, the album, taking back their lives, they'd been so damn close, and now... Nothing. It felt like it was all gone. All the work, months of it. The therapy, the singing, the songwriting, what the hell had it been for? Nothing had changed except that Jones was out there again, and he was going to find them. Well, no, he knew exactly where they were because they hadn't left the Palm Woods yet. The security was supposed to be good enough for that, but it didn't feel safe. Then again, Kendall hadn't felt safe since the day the letters started coming. He wasn't safe. None of them were.
“Are you going to tell me about them?”
He shook his head. “I don't want to talk about them.”
She sighed. He knew that sigh. She couldn't say it, didn't like it, but she was frustrated again. It had taken a lot to be able to talk to her at all, and he still hated it. He told her only what he had to tell her. He didn't like speaking to her. She was a good counselor, a nice lady, but.. she was a stranger, and a stranger didn't need to know what he was thinking or feeling or anything like that. She really didn't like it when he didn't talk to her, though. She seemed to take that a bit personally, and maybe it was a little, since he didn't talk to her. Then again, he didn't talk that much to anyone. Not his mom. Not the guys. Not Katie.
“You should talk about them. If not to me, then to someone else, Kendall. You know that.”
He took a deep breath. He really hated this. “Can I just go now?”
“You're supposed to spend a full hour with me, and that's not something you've forgotten. If I really thought you needed to go, then I would let you go, but I actually think what you really need right now is to open up to someone again. You know the reason why you've been here every day.”
“You think I'm ignoring it?” he demanded, getting out of his seat and walking to the window. He really hated this place. Then again, he didn't like much of anything right now. “Jones is out there. He could be watching this room right now because no one knows where he is. The police don't, we don't, and one thing that everyone seems to agree on is that he's probably after us.”
“So what does that mean to you?”
“You know, I appreciate the effort not to ask me how it makes me feel, since you know how much I hate that question,” he began, still looking out the window. He couldn't see anyone, but he'd spent months not seeing anyone but being convinced they were there anyway. He knew it was paranoia. He didn't need to discuss it. “But it's still the same question, and you didn't fool me.”
“I didn't think I would. I am here to help you, though. I can tell just by your body language that you're feeling pressured again,” she told him. “Jones is out there. How does that affect you personally? How are you coping with it?”
“Not by coming here and talking to you,” he answered, smiling a little as he heard her sigh again. He shouldn't like frustrating her as much as he did. She was a good person. She genuinely cared about all of them, and she had helped them. But he still didn't like being here with her.
“Are you dealing with it at all or are you bottling it up again? Remember how you hate the way it all comes out at your friends, Kendall. You told me you never wanted to go back to that. You don't want to hurt any of them.”
He winced. That was and always would be his weakness. He didn't know how to stop trying to protect them. He had been doing it for so long, for them, for Katie, even for his mom... The counselor knew that. She knew that she could get him with it, too. It worked every time.
“The nightmares... they're... constant. It's not just when I'm sleeping.”
“You're afraid of Jones finding you again?”
“Not... exactly,” Kendall began slowly. He looked back at her. “I keep having this image repeat over and over in my head, and... I don't like it.”
“Something you saw? Was it... Jones?”
“Do we really have to keep going over the fact that I was the one unlucky enough to see him naked? That really isn't as big of a deal as everyone thinks it is.”
“The missing time is,” she countered quietly. Kendall choked, feeling sick. How did she know? She shouldn't know. She shouldn't be able to guess. She rose from the chair and came closer to him, leaning against the desk. “Kendall, the time you can't remember, has any of it come back to you?”
He shook his head. “No. No, that's not it. That part is still a blank, and I think I want it that way. I just keep... Obsessing over it, I guess.”
“You know there is a simple way to know.”
“I don't want to know. I never want to know. I couldn't handle it if I did.”
“If it's what you're really afraid of, maybe, but if it's not, it could give you the peace of mind you've been missing.”
Kendall laughed harshly. “There's no such thing as peace of mind anymore, is there? Jones is still out there.”
“And you blame yourself for that, don't you?”
I should have killed him when I had the chance. I should have killed him. And if not him, then myself, Kendall thought. Still, he shook his head. “No.”
“What are you doing?”
“Nothing.”
“Carlos, that's not nothing. That's a... it's, uh...” Logan tried but failed to come up with anything to describe what he was thinking. He didn't even know what that was. Waiting for Kendall to get out of the counselor's office sucked. He always ended up in there longer than the rest of them, probably because he wouldn't talk. Or because he had more stuff going on. Or both. It was hard to say with him. It was like that announcement the day after their concert had flipped a switch and Kendall had gone almost entirely back to square one.
Not that the rest of them were much better, but Kendall, as always, took it the hardest because he was trying to keep the rest of them protected, safe, and believing that he was okay. He stopped talking to them, did a lot of I'm fine, but somehow, at the same time, he kept trying to keep them from seeing that he was freaking out, and tried to keep them from freaking out about Jones being out there again, too. It was so hard to watch.
“Is it a duck?” James asked, frowning.
“A crane,” Carlos said. He'd taken up origami after the counselor managed to talk him out of the body armor idea—and that hadn't been an easy sell because he wanted to protect himself and his friends—and into something creative. He'd been driving them crazy with the paper art, even though they knew he needed it just as much as he needed corn dogs. “It's a crane. You never get it right.”
“Well, it's not that it doesn't look like a bird,” Logan began quietly. He smiled a little. “I was just kind of worried that the counselor wasn't going to like you using her personalized stationary for it.”
“I used all of the brochures first, and they weren't even the right size,” Carlos protested. “Kendall was supposed to be done an hour ago.”
“So what? It takes as long as it takes,” James said, taking out his mirror and studying himself briefly. He put it away again quickly, not like he really cared about how he looked but because it was a habit. A routine that he couldn't quit because it was deeply ingrained, not only into who he was but even his muscle memory. He had to do it. He didn't necessarily want to. “You have to admit that Kendall's been really... bad lately. Let him talk it out if he's going to.”
“You really think Kendall's talking it out?” Logan asked, looking over at him. “You know that every time we try to talk to him, he turns it around and makes it about one of us or something. Like the other night when he woke up screaming about the blood and somehow we managed to spend the whole time talking about the dream that you had about the dancing hobos?”
“Hey, that was a seriously creepy dream. It freaked me out,” James objected, and Logan nodded. It sounded funny, but it hadn't been. It might have been easier if Kendall hadn't made up all those stories about Jones when they were kids, stories that were almost... true. “But I know what you mean. He's probably not talking.”
“I should make a different model,” Carlos said, picking up the crane. Despite all the practice he'd been getting, Logan had to admit that it didn't look like a crane. “Maybe a flower?”
“Do you want everyone to think you're gay?”
Carlos punched James hard in the arm. “Origami is not gay. And everyone thinks you are, Mr. Fancy Clothes and Perfect Hair.”
“It is perfect, thank you, and there is nothing wrong with dressing nice,” James said, rubbing his arm. “At least I don't go around wearing a helmet all the time. What are you, five?”
“Guys, stop it,” Logan said, trying to pull them apart and getting caught in the middle somehow. He didn't understand why they kept going back to fighting among themselves. It used to be Kendall losing his temper and yelling at everyone, but it wasn't that now.
“Geez, I'm gone for what, an hour, and you are all at each other's throats. Great.”
“Kendall!” Carlos cried happily, extracting himself from the pile. He looked at James. “He started it. He said origami was gay.”
“No, I asked if you wanted to have everyone think you were gay.”
“I was just trying to stop them,” Logan added. He looked at his friend. “How... did it go?”
“The usual,” Kendall said. He looked at the bodyguards that were coming closer and sighed. “Guess we get to go back to lock up now.”
“They're just trying to keep us safe, Kendall.”
“I know that. But if you hadn't noticed, being cooped up is getting to everyone,” he said, pointing to Carlos' paper mess and the way James and Carlos kept glaring at each other. “You know neither of them would have said that if we weren't spending so much time locked in together.”
“What would you know about it? You're avoiding us again.”
Kendall looked at him, then shook his head and walked away. James and Carlos turned to him. “What did you do that for? He was actually being... Kendall for a change.”
“I don't know,” Logan said miserably. “I just... I don't want the little moments where he's Kendall. I want him back whole.”
“Well, until they find Jones and lock him up—”
“Or kill him,” Carlos added darkly. Logan felt sick to hear Carlos, of all people, saying that.
“—so that's not going to happen,” James finished, shaking his head. “None of us are going to be okay until one of those things happens.”
“Quit looking at me like that,” Kendall said as they all turned on him. He wished they'd listened to him and stopped looking. It was just a fan site. It shouldn't matter. “He just told everyone in the whole wide world that he has had the 'pleasure' of us—not just me—so why are you all looking at me? This didn't just happen to me, okay? You all got touched by him, okay? This is not an exclusive Kendall-only club.”
The others didn't say anything. They just stared. He shook his head. “I can't believe we have to go over this again. I told you nothing happened.”
The others were still looking at him. Finally, Logan took a deep breath. “Kendall, I read the chart—”
Kendall sat up in bed, panting hard. He couldn't believe how badly that dream had upset him. He was sick of this. The dreams were bad, awful, but this one wasn't even half as bad as the one that had woke him the other night. That had been the worst one he'd had probably in his entire life. This one... it was tame in comparison. He shivered a little and pulled the sweatshirt he kept at the foot of his bed on, followed by a pair of sweatpants. None of the others had woken up this time, so he quietly left the room, making his way into the kitchen. He'd probably end up in front of the tv again. He didn't know. He didn't think he'd actually slept at all since the concert. It was all nightmares and racing thoughts and looking over his shoulder constantly.
He looked at the clock. Ten twenty. He hadn't even managed to stay asleep for more than twenty minutes this time. Damn it. This had to stop. He couldn't keep this up for much longer. He was just going to collapse from exhaustion.
“You had a nightmare again, didn't you?”
He cursed loudly and whirled around to face his sister. She should have been the least terrifying thing in the world, just a little girl in a pair of pink pajamas, fuzzy slippers, and braids. She was Katie, of course, and that was a bit scary, but not like the monster that haunted all of their dreams. “Damn it, Katie, don't do that to me. You just scared the sh—crap out of me.”
She sighed. “I'm sorry. I keep forgetting I can't walk up behind you. It doesn't make what I said any less valid. You had another nightmare.”
He rubbed his arms for a moment and went to the fridge. He didn't really want anything—hadn't been hungry in days, but it was something to do, to keep his hands busy. “It was a dumb one. I'll be back in bed in a little bit.”
“Sure. Because you haven't been wide awake in front of the tv every day for the past week,” she countered, and he sighed, setting the orange juice on the counter.
“What do you want from me, Katie?” Kendall demanded. He'd been told again and again not to try and pretend that he was okay when he wasn't, not to bottle everything in until his anger exploded, and he was honestly trying to handle his emotions, but he didn't know what to do. Again. Jones had managed to mess everything up, again. Kendall had expected a rough time when the trial got there, but now it wasn't the trial they had to worry about. “Just when we thought we were getting our lives back, that... that bastard got out and is somewhere out there taunting us and waiting for his chance to get at us again. He is watching. Every minute. He's waiting for security to slip up, and when they do, he'll grab us, and he'll finish what he started.”
Katie crossed the room to him and wrapped her arms around him. She wasn't Jones. Not at all. She was small and short and his sister, for crying out loud, but Kendall still tensed and flinched and hated himself for it. He didn't want to be like this. He just wanted his damn life back. “It won't work.”
“What, the hug?”
He shook his head. “This. The album. I was wrong. We should have quit. We should have split and gone our separate ways. He only wants the four of us when we're complete. That's why he didn't escape until we had released the second album. He wants us whole when he destroys us.”
“Your head is a really messed up place.”
“Gee, thanks.”
“And you're wrong. You needed to do the album. And the concerts.”
“Concert. We did one. And he escaped.” Kendall shuddered. “He could have been there. One of those I love BTR signs could have been him.”
“But even if it was, most of them were genuine normal fans, kids from that charity that you helped just by telling the world it existed., but those songs weren't just for you and the guys. Those kids needed them, too.”
He knew she was right. That crowd had been special, and it had been important. It had been perfect... until the next day, when they heard the truth and everything just... vanished. “I hate this, Katie. I just want it to end.”
“I know.”
“I can't do this again. I just can't.”