—

For one long moment, both Frank and Gerard stood there in the kitchen and stared at each other with expressions of pure shock plastered onto their red faces. The end with the most surprise from hearing Jamia outside the door was Frank, who suddenly went very cold inside just thinking of all the possibilities there were, reasons why she would be here. Did she bring the entire government police with her, did she bring his mother and Gerard's? Mainly, he believed she came to take them away from each other because she must have felt betrayed once the news slipped out, and it was all coming much sooner than Frank needed it to be. Frank's breath shuddered once he saw the terror slowly filling Gerard's eyes.

"Gerard!" Frank hissed in a whisper and quickly closed the distance between them, taking Gerard's cold hands in his. "We have to hide, run, something!"

"We can't run!" Gerard's eyes watered rapidly and his mouth twisted into a grimace. "We'll get lost in the woods. If we don't die here we'll die out there."

"Then we need to find a hiding spot somewhere here or else-" Frank was suddenly cut off, but it was not by Gerard, it was by the person standing outside of the front door.

"Look, I know you must think I'm here to separate you, but I'm not." There was a pleading note to Jamia's voice that seemed too convincing, causing Frank's heart to drop. "I'm here to protect you. I have answers, I know why you love each other. Frank . . . I know why we never fell in love."

Frank nearly fell to his knees right there. The knife entered his gut, twisting and sending shock through his entire body. His lips parted in shock and he heard Gerard take in a sharp breath of air. He felt the shock flood all the way into his very fingertips, hand tightening around Gerard's.

"I brought someone with me." Jamia continued softly when there was no answer from either one of them.

"Gerard?" Spoke another soft spoken voice - it was male, young, and most definitely not anyone Frank had ever met before.

But this voice rose a reaction out of Gerard. The latter's eyes widened, eyes snapping to focus on the door masking the owner of the voice. Frank's eyebrows scrunched together in pure confusion, too much surprise running through him that he could barely take in everything that was happening. All he thought of was the possibility of finally having answers, of receiving the key to the knowledge Frank was always locked away from. Three thousand theories later and there was an opportunity standing right before him and his love, ready to be grasped and taken.

"That's my brother." Gerard whispered. He tugged on Frank's arm and looked at him with wide, urgent eyes, blinking wildly. "Frank, please, we have to answer the door."

Frank wanted to say yes, he wanted to fling the door open and welcome all of the well deserved answers he never got, let them both into their home and finally get the piece of relief to calm his raging mind. For years, Frank suffered through endless periods of depression wondering what was wrong with him, why everyone could be happy with their perfectly picked lives except for him. But another half of him remained extremely weary - why would Jamia want to help him when he had lied to her for years? Why would she break rules by coming to him and Gerard with answers they needed at a time where everyone was out to get them?

"Gerard . . . it could be a set up." Frank whispered. "I want to believe it isn't, but we need to be real about this."

"Love, my brother is here." Gerard squeezed Frank's hand and came closer, reaching out and cupping Frank's cheek with his smooth and warm palm, the nervous and terrified film over his hazel eyes dissolving into one of comfort that Frank wished he could feel at the moment. "My brother would not hurt us. Jamia's here to help. Don't you want to know why everything went wrong?"

"Of course I do, that's all I've ever wanted." Frank sighed and glanced at the door with the unease weighing him down slowly dissipating and replacing itself with a less intense uncertainty.

"Come on, then." Gerard willed Frank to come towards the door by pulling his arm, slowly leading them both to the entrance where only a carved block of wood separated them from the two people standing outside. Hopefully there were only two people, one part of Frank was still tense and fearing the worst. But he did this for Gerard, he reached for the doorknob only because Gerard believed there was nothing to fear. Frank unlocked the door, wrapped his hand around the knob while sucking in a gulp of air, and opened the door.

When they looked outside, it was the greatest relief Frank ever felt when he saw there were only two people standing at the entryway as promised. There stood Jamia who looked pale and serious, then a tall light brunette boy with a slight slouch​ standing next to her, eyes widening and flickering between Frank and Gerard.

"I didn't think you would trust us enough to open the door." Jamia said softly and folded her hands together.

"Please understand that there are people looking for us. God knows what they'd do if they got a hold of Gerard and I." Frank let out the breath he was holding in and felt Gerard's hand squeeze his.

"Well, if your dreams were to be famous, then you two made the headlines on the daily paper." Gerard's brother held out a newspaper to them, lips mashing into a thin line and his hazel eyes were deeply sympathetic.

Frank looked down at the paper and read the headliner typed in large, black font across the front.

'Two homosexual teenagers on the run: wanted - to punish or cure?'

"Punish or cure?" Gerard snatched the paper out of Mikey's hand and some with an angry tone, a pucker forming between his eyebrows. "You can't punish someone for being in love with the same sex and you certainly can't cure human emotion!"

"The government is corrupt. There are many things going on inside it, things nobody knows about and that's why we've been kept in the dark for so long." Jamia explained in an even, grave tone, her dark eyes serious as they looked between Frank and Gerard. "My father works for the government. I stole his keycard and broke into his office. I have files, evidence, answers." Jamia shrugged off the strap of a messenger bag she had resting on her hip, patting it to prove her point. Frank felt his stomach drop and his heartbeat picked up a few paces.

"Are they trying to fuck you up too, Jamia?" Frank asked quietly before he could control himself. He looked away from the wretched newspaper in Gerard's trembling hands and made direct eye contact with Jamia, his Match, or maybe she was not his Match at all. Their eyes locked and yes, there had always been some form of a connection between them, but it was an understanding, nothing romantic laid behind their stares. They understood each others motives and ways of thinking. And at that very second, Frank knew Jamia did not resent him for anything, she truly desired to help him and Gerard.

"They fucked everyone over. Even Mikey." Jamia jerked her head towards the lanky younger boy next to her and the latter flushed deeply. Despite the sign of embarrassment, his eyes flashed with pain, the kind of pain Frank had felt before.

"Come in, please. We need this." Gerard interjected softly and stood out of the way. Frank mimicked his actions, waiting until Jamia and Mikey were inside before shutting the door again and locking it.

"How did you find us?" Gerard asked and tossed the newspaper onto the kitchen table, giving it a small and quick glare of disgust.

"I thought you might have been here." Mikey said. "It was the only hiding place I could think of."

"Mikey helped me find you." Jamia sat down on the sofa and placed her messenger bag on her lap. "I met Mikey a long while ago, sometimes he would hang out with Lindsey and I. He found me again at the masquerade ball, caught me looking through top secret files. He knows just as much as I do because he's living through the same thing."

"What is this thing you're speaking of, to be exact?" Frank asked slowly and sank down on the smaller couch opposite to Jamia and Mikey, sitting beside Gerard and reaching out for his hand. Gerard gratefully clasped their hands together and scooted closer until the sides of their thighs were pressed together.

"Frank, the government . . . " Jamia bit her lip and looked down at her bag. "It's the Matching system. Someone hacked it when you were born, they changed your Match so you were paired with me. I had a different Match too, they also changed mine, and that's why we never fell in love. I never told you I couldn't love you because I thought you did truly love me, so I played the part, and everyone believed it. But we were both playing the same game all along, all because of one stupid person."

Frank was already beginning to feel sick to his stomach. The room fell silent for a long while, he could have sworn that if a pin dropped, everyone would have been able to hear it. If his heart beat any faster, than it would burst, burst and kill him on the spot. He swallowed thickly and stared intently at Jamia, opening his mouth that felt full of cotton to speak.

"Who?" Was all he could get out. He did not know whether he meant who changed the system or who they were meant to be with originally. He was asking for both if anything, but at the moment, he remained unsure if he wanted both answers at the same time.

"Your mother." Jamia replied flatly.

Frank's heart stopped beating all together. His breath caught in his throat and he choked on it, letting out a gasp as the surprise punched the air out of him, straightening his spine so his body was poised in a rigid position.

"Why would she do it?" Frank managed to choke out and barely felt the soft touch of Gerard's hand rubbing his back in a soothing manner. He glanced at his lover sitting to his right. His expression was also deeply shocked.

"Your original Match was not to her liking, apparently. I have files to prove that there was a change in the system, there are two documents in our files. One stating the information of our original Matches, then the other Matching us together." Jamia opened her bag and pulled out two beige colored folders, one with Frank's name on the tab and the others with her own. Then she pulled out two others - surprisingly, it was for the Way brothers.

"You're a part of it too, Gerard." Jamia said softly and looked at Gerard with a sympathetic frown. "You . . . you and Frank need to look at these." She held out the file to him in her slightly shaky hand. Frank saw Mikey take his from the corner of his eye, a knowing look plastered on his face and telling he had already seen the file. Yet he opened it again, and the same sadness he saw earlier returned to his expression.

Gerard took the file carefully into his hand. He licked his lips, then turned his head and locked his gaze with Frank's. Frank could see the question in Gerard's eyes, the words burning behind his saddened hazel irises.

'Do I dare?'

Frank answered him with a slight nod.

'We have to.'

Frank sucked in a shaky breath and forced himself to look away from Gerard. He dropped his gaze onto the file instead. He looked at the red stamp across the front, a warning not to open such top secret information. It could not be so top secret in his hands if it were his own information, his birth given Match and the one his mother had wrongly chosen for him. He blamed her, hated her, for she caused great suffering in Frank's life and she could never take any amount of that pain and confusion he felt. He opened the file and bit into his bottom lip, seeing a printed document with black and perfectly aligned letters typed onto it, two people and one of them was his own self. This was his original Match, the person he was meant to be with, and the person was -

It . . .

Frank stopped breathing. His eyes remained frozen on that one name, he did not even need to look over anything else because it was the name that immediately caught him in a daze, setting in the cold reality and it all slowly began to sink in, every single one of his pores opening and absorbing the bit of information he read over and over again. Beside him, Gerard let out a tiny, broken sob, so quiet compared to how a sob would normally sound when a person took in heartbreaking news.

With one shaking finger, Frank traced the beautiful name printed onto the page with his fingertip. It was written in its full context here, but it was the same name nonetheless and one he had been saying for years, loving for years. He learned to breathe it, embrace it, seek refuge in it. The one name belonging to the person who mattered more than anyone else in the world.

Gerard Arthur Way.

"That's why you two fell in love." Jamia broke the silence with a wistful whisper. "You weren't made for me, Frank. Gerard wasn't made for Lindsey, he was made for you."

"Oh my god." Frank choked out once all the overwhelming emotions hit him all at once. He felt happiness, relief, anger, love, and despair, mixing with his tears and blocking the sobs he needed to come out or else he might just choke on all of them. His body trembled, the file slipping out of his hands and falling to the floor with a soft thud.

"The dreams, those dreams. I knew they were special, they had to be." Gerard whimpered and tightened his hold on Frank's hand. He turned his body towards Frank, sniffling and gently turning Frank's head with his hand so their eyes could meet. Gerard's hand was so soft and careful about the way it cradled his jaw, Frank never felt a touch such as his love's before. He leaned into it immediately, kissing his palm, taking his wrist and kissing over his knuckles.

"I only ever felt complete with you. I never knew why." Frank whispered and felt his tears rapidly falling from his eyes. Gerard's were also leaking heavily, steaming down his flushed cheeks and his lips. Gerard sobbed softly, but smiled through his tears when Frank kissed the back of his hand, opening his palm and leaning his cheek into his warm touch again because right now, he needed it so badly.

"The government knew the system was hacked." Jamia interjected. All eyes turned towards her again, all expression also turning serious as hers was. Gerard leaned into Frank's chest and Frank wrapped his arms around him, bringing his fingers to Gerard's hair and slowly combing through it.

"They did nothing about it. If anything, Linda corrected a grave error. But by hacking and changing one person's Match, it all rippled the fabric of the system. It's a domino effect - Gerard was Matched with someone he was not supposed to be with, that person's Match messed up, and their Match also had to be changed - ripples. For nineteen years, everyone has been paired with the wrong people, everything is corrupt and wrong. They're all playing the same game Frank and I played, if anyone dared to find and be with their real Match, everything would plummet to hell because according to the system, that isn't who their real Match is. It's against the law to be with anyone who isn't your assigned soulmate." Jamia bit her lip and glanced down at her own file. The longer she stared at it, Frank noticed how her expression was slowly forming itself into the one he was used to seeing her with now - a look of emptiness, a sadness that cried out for a cure but there was no amount of happiness anyone could give her that could make it go away. She took in a shuddering breath, and as she snapped her eyes shut, she opened her own file and slid it across the coffee table to show Frank and Gerard who her Match was supposed to be.

Gerard gingerly grabbed the file, retrieved the paper and laid his eyes on it. Frank looked down too, skipping over Jamia's information to see who she was supposed to be with. When he did see the name, however, his stomach plummeted with a pity so deep that he nearly felt her sadness inside his heart.

Lindsey Ann Ballato.

"Jamia . . ." Gerard whispered. He looked up at the girl and sighed. "I'm so sorry."

Jamia's lips turned up into a smile void of any happiness. Frank had no words to say, he waited for her to speak because he was at a loss. Mikey was looking upon her sympathetically, taking the paper from Gerard and safely tucking it back into the folder before closing it.

"Lindsey and I were friends since we were about fourteen." Jamia began, her voice sounding far away. "Yeah, we fell in love, and I swore that I would never love anyone the way I loved her. She was a firework, everything I wanted and more, but she was everything I couldn't have because of the fucking system. We tried to hide, but it just became harder and harder for her, and eventually it made her so depressed that she couldn't . . ." Jamia sucked in a breath through her teeth and her face scrunched up like it physically hurt her to explain the situation. Frank understood, because if anything were to ever happen to Gerard, he would not be able to live with the pain of losing him. He could not believe how Jamia was still standing, still capable of functioning and speaking like a normal human being. Maybe Frank underestimated Jamia this entire time, maybe he was being shallow if he thought he always had it hard.

"I wasn't supposed to be with Alicia." Mikey spoke for the first time in a large handful of moments. He rubbed the side of his face and sighed deeply, hanging his head. "I'm in love with Kristin. I'm guessing that's my original Match even though there's no document stating it, but we dream about each other every night, we just can't feel each other in them. Jamia said she had the same dreams with Lindsey, I'm sure everyone else has with their real Matches."

"W-we did." Gerard stuttered out in shock. He looked up at Frank with large and glistening doe eyes, and when Frank stared back at him, he felt it all slowly clicking together in his head. Everything made sense now, nothing was following him around like a nameless shadow anymore. His answer to his lifelong struggle was right in front of his eyes, the largest part of it had always been right beside him. His answer to everything had always been there, he just never knew it. Gerard was his cure, the antidote he had been taking for the longest time without even realizing it.

"What do we do now?" Frank asked. His voice sounded so small in his own ears that it surprised him. The surprise, however, quickly faded away because he was tired of all the shock entering his veins, he felt numb and exhausted because of it all. He held Gerard close to his side, ghosting his lips over the top of his head.

"Simple." Jamia took all of the files, stacked then together, and slapped them down onto the table again. "We're going to expose these motherfuckers even if it's the last thing we do."

—
A/N: Oh my god this chapter was so hard to write, my head hurts now. Like I knew since day one what to write, the reasons and the whole plot to this chapter, but actually writing it out was exhausting as heck.

But, anyways, what do you think of that? That answer your questions? A lot of you guys got it before I even had a chance to write this, but it was pretty obvious what was going on. Now you see the extent of Linda's absolute fuckery though.

So, do you think Linda's gonna get the worst of everyone's wrath?

How are they gonna expose those motherfuckers?

Are you ready for my plot twist now that the end is near?

;)

"I wanna be the taste on your lips and the curse on your tongue."

-aprilxo