We arrived at his house a couple of hours later. Night had fallen by then, the darkness smearing the once bright sky until the stars sprouted. And I just drove, drive through the blackness to keep the shadows from clinging to me. Claude was passed out in the backseat, like the little lightweight that he is.

But finally, we pulled up to a house. Honestly, I kind of expected Claude's family to live in a miniature castle, but it was just an ordinary house. It was pretty, very pretty, but nothing out of the land of fairy tales like I had expected. The house, however, was surrounded by numerous cars.

"Claude?"

He emitted a snore.

I rolled my eyes. "Claude."

He shot up, startled into the waking world. "Wha- Bees? What's going on? Are you okay?"

"Everything's fine," I reassured him. "It's just that we are at your family's house."

"We are?" I watched him look out the window. "I guess we are."

I turned away from him now, staring down the inky road I would travel. "So I guess it was nice knowing you-"

"Bees."

I ignored him. "-I think you can handle getting your stuff out of the back. So I should really get going now, if you would-"

"Bees, I think I'm going to throw up," he told me.

Oh, fuck.

"Not in the rental car," I insisted, quickly.

"Ugh, Bea," he groaned.

Fucking Claude.

Swiftly, I got out of the car and hurried to the backseat. I grabbed him under his shoulders and helped pull him out. As soon as he got out, letting me shut the door behind him, he stumbled all over his feet. I wrapped my arm around his back and let him lean against me.

"You better not vomit on me," I insisted.

"I just want to go to bed," he mumbled.

I couldn't help but soften. I remembered my first time being drunk, and I knew Claude was different than most. I sighed. "Let me help you inside, okay? I'll grab your bags for you later."

I basically dragged Claude with me up the steps to the door.

"It should be unlocked," he told me.

He was right.

I opened the door.

Here I was, wearing an old Maroon 5 tour shirt (yes, I had fucking put it on), holding up a man who reeked of Jack Daniels, blood, and sweat. And suddenly I was in this beautiful house, surrounded by people in elegant dresses and suits. They sipped champagne and snacks that were much nicer than just pigs in a blankets. Fucking Claude.

"My room is ..." he mumbled.

"Where?" I demanded.

But then he started giggling and he wouldn't stop giggling, so he was pretty fucking useless to me and I had no idea where I was going.

"Claude!"

Abruptly, a woman appeared in front of me. I don't know how, but I knew instantly that she was Claude's mother. She had his thick head of golden blonde hair, and the same wicked eyes. The rest of her face was different than the man I supported, but all I could was him in her eyes. Of course, unlike the dirty guy in my arms, she wore an elegant gold dress and held a glass of wine.

"Who are you?" She hissed at me.

"Uh, I'm Bea," I said, instantly. I shook my head. "Sorry. I've been traveling with Claude for the last couple of days. We would've been here sooner except that Claude's, um, not feeling too well. I think I'll just take him up to his room and out of the way, if you could show me the way-"

"I'm not an idiot. I know he's drunk," Claude's mother snapped. "Or worse, high! First he has to be late, but then he has the audacity to show up dirty, with some strange girl, drunk or high off his mind. I don't care if you're not a grown adult, you are going to be in so much trouble, Claude Martin. You ar-"

"Claude?"

Now it was a second voice.

The voice scattered my (admittedly very venomous) thoughts. A young girl ran down the stairs, maybe around seventeen. She had sleek black hair, like a bottle of ink had spilt down her shoulders. She had black slanted eyes and a lightly tanned heart-shaped face, with a streaked clump of something bright pink on her cheek. The girl wore a casual dress adorned with daisies, which flowed behind her like springtime as she dashed down the stairs towards us.

However, she wasn't alone. In her wake came a boy, quickly tracing her footsteps. He wore a suit, but he seemed uncomfortable in it. He had a blonde fade, with the biggest and brightest emerald eyes you had ever seen. And he locked those eyes, hungry eyes, on the girl in the daisy dress like she was something new and refreshing and undiscovered. He looked at her how Columbus probably saw the New World.

"Go-goodness, is he ok-okay?" The girl demanded, grabbing Claude's cheeks as she teaches us. "He looks del-del-delirious."

"Lower your voice, young lady," Mrs. Martin demanded.

"Besides, I'm fine," Claude mumbled, the giggling subsiding.

"I'm sorry, Mom," she replied instantly. I saw her fingers clench against his skin.

Mom? So that must mean ...

"Clean him up, will you?" Mrs. Martin spat. "And be quiet. Last thing I need is have my son to be a laughing stock, alongside his sister."

Ah, hell no.

"Hey, I know it must have been a real pleasure to get that stick up your ass surgically removed, but that doesn't give you permission to hit your daughter with it now that it's available," I snapped at her.

But the older woman just blinked at me. "You're still here? Thanks for getting him inside, but we can deal with him in here. You should leave. Annalise will take care of him."

So the other girl was Annalise. Interesting.

But before I could respond, Mrs. Martin disappeared.

There was silence for a moment. Then,

"I don't know who you are, but I like you already." It was the boy, speaking up for the first time. He had a nice, pleasant sort of voice. But he spoke with too much ease, almost, like ... kind of like Julian.

"You di-didnt ha-hav-have to say tha-that," Annalise murmured, quietly, and I noticed her gaze was locked on her feet.

"Someone had to," the guy insisted. He reached forward, and his fingers splayed across her shoulders. "You can't keep letting her hurt you like that, dove."

But Annalise didn't respond.

"Can you two help me get Claude upstairs?" I requested. "You know, before he vomits on the carpet or something and the hag from hell decides to sacrifice me."

The guy laughed again. "I like that. My name is Fin, by the way. Finland Erickson. What's your name?"

"I'm Bea," I informed them, as Fin came around to help take some of Claude's burden. "Now which way are we headed?"

"U-upstairs," Annalise murmured. "Foll-follow me."

She turned away quickly, so I couldn't catch her expression, and headed towards the stairs. I did see the concern written in on Fin's face, but chose not to comment.

Annalise led us all the way to his room. It was too dark for me to make out many details, but everything seemed very near and organized and Claude from the quick glance I got. Fin and I dumped him on his bed, and I worked on getting his shoes off.

"Ugh," Claude groaned. "Bees? Now I really think I'm going to vomit."

"Seriously?" I scowled. "You're such a lightweight."

"I'll g-go get him a bo-bowl," Annalise murmured.

"Thanks," I replied.

Quickly, it was just Fin, the drunken man that wasn't exactly my biggest fan, and me.

Fin and I chatted casually for a couple of minutes, until it became apparent that Annalise was taking too long. His expression clouded with that concern I saw earlier.

"I'm just going to go check on her, okay?" Fin told me. "I'll be back."

"Okay," I agreed, thinking nothing of it, as he left.

That's when I heard him groan, the man drunk like a teenager on the bed of his childhood. I glanced at Claude, watching his brows squeeze his eyes as another groan slipped from his lips.

"You're not going to throw up here," I reminded him. "Do you know how hard vomit stains are to remove? You're not ruining your carpet like that."

Claude opened his eyes, the blue washed out by the lack of lighting in the room. Moonlight seeped through the blinds, lighting his face is streaks of white. Even drunk and glossed over, he seemed to be able to see through me and see who I really was. And, for some reason, he didn't look frightened.

"Baby, I'm frightened," he murmured, in that slow drunk drawl he had.

Baby.

I gulped, feeling that word slither down to the pit of my stomach. That one word like the singularity that came before the Big Bang. Those four letters were unleashed upon my body, like the birth of the universe. I was no longer blood and organs and bones, but constellations. Planets. Galaxies. Stardust ran through my veins and I thought that if I tried hard enough that maybe I could fly. And he looked at me at that moment like I was more than his world, more than the sun, but like I was the whole entire fucking universe. Claude Martin looked at me like I was space and he wanted to get lost in me.

"Wha-what are you frightened about?" I asked, stumbling over my words, because really I was the one that was frightened.

"You," he murmured, and I felt my cheeks flame. "And ... her."

"Her?" I repeated. Anything to turn the topic away from me. "What are you talking about?"

"Annalise."

I bit my lip. Here was lying on this bed. This beautiful grown man who understood the mechanics of the world, who epitomized efficiency and grace, who was wasted away on a liquid he had vowed to never drink. Because of me. And now he spoke of his suicidal sister, and he looked so small on that bed. Like a child. Like a kid who grew up in the apocalypse, in ashes and blood, and he was scared and I was the only one here to help him.

But at least you're a real grief counselor, I tried to remind myself. You're the most qualified person to help him.

Yet I knew that wasn't true either. Once you started ... caring about your patients, you couldn't help them anymore. Love didn't help people. It didn't help my parents.

But that didn't stop me from reaching forward, for my fingers curling with his. And he turned and looked at me with those wide blue tears that shimmered with a veil I had seen reflected in my own gaze all to often. "She's going to be okay."

"She was supposed to be getting me a bowl," he murmured in response. "She should've been back by now."

"I'm sure she's-"

"Dying?" He suggested. "But how? That's my question. Pills, as bright as the candy we used to cherish when we were little? A rope? Or worse– a scarf, because she didn't really have time to plan for tonight. A gun, a knife. The bathtub with the X's-"

"No, no, no," I tried to reassure him. "Annalise is save. She's save and u harmed an-"

"But how do you know if you're here with me?" he demanded, sounding so awfully sober.

"Fin went to look for her," I reasoned.

"But what if he doesn't find her?"

"What makes you think that I could do a better job?" I retorted.

His fingers squeezed mine. "Because you never give up. Even when you say you have, you haven't."

And then he looked at me with those eyes that seemed to be saying so much more. But he was so drunk and so stupidly smart and I couldn't handle anything more.

"I'll find her, okay?" I promised. "But she's just going to be fine and you'll have thrown this temper tantrum for nothing. And don't throw up on the carpet. This looks like some expensive shit."

He actually smiled at that last remark.

The little asshole.

*

I knew something was wrong when I found Fin curled up by a closed door, slamming his fists against the wooden line. He was crying.

"Well, this sure looks like a knock-knock joke gone wrong," I muttered, dryly.

At the sound of my voice, Fin looked up. "It's you! You have to help me."

I already didn't like the way this was going. "I have to help you? That's not how you're supposed to ask for favors, you know."

"Annalise locked herself in the bathroom," he said, ignoring me. "She was ... I don't know. But she's upset and I can hear her crying and I think she has a razor in there and I don't know what to do. What can I do? What am-"

I swallowed. Of course, the very thing that Claude was worried about could possibly be happening, right after I promised him everything was going to be okay. But worse than that, there was a girl in there. A scared girl. A hurt girl. And I knew I could help her.

"Okay, first you need to calm down," I told the boy. "Annalise needs you to be strong for her, she needs to feel like she can rely on you. Take a deep breath, okay?"

Hesitantly, Fin wiped the tears from his cheeks with the back of his hand. "S-sorry."

"Nothing to be sorry about," I reassured, before kneeling next to him.

From this side of the door, I could hear her. The heaving sobs like the slushing final drops of whiskey in a bottle, like the burn that was supposed to make you feel better but never did. Because sometimes you hurt yourself more because you think it'll make you feel better, but it only makes everything that much worse. I knocked lightly. "Annalise? Annalise, can you hear me?"

She didn't respond.

I sighed, and closed my eyes. Blackness faced me, like the blackness I knew she craved with the razor between her fingers. I thought about the blood, the red, the crimson which enveloped her world at that moment. About how she drowned in it until even her blood morphed to venom, transformed black, and she had the darkness she desired. And I thought about the night Claude saved me from a lake and myself and the darkness. This girl was drowning, too, and she needed me.

"I know you don't know me," I began, quietly. "But I feel like I know you. Claude talks about you a lot, even though he doesn't realize it. He talks about your art, and that wheezy little laugh you apparently have, and this golden heart which would drive any pirate mad. But he also talks about his fear. His fear of you. Claude worries about you so much, practically all the time. He barely sleeps because, when he does, Claude has these terrible nightmares about all the things he worries you do to yourself."

Her crying subsided, slightly, but I could hear another noise. Something sharp. Something metallic. My stomach squirmed.

I glanced up to find Fin's face filled with terror. His expression was haunted with his love for the girl on the other side of the door, the love that was so obvious no one needed to ask about it. And it seemed like it was just this fucking wooden door that say between them, between that young, naive, foolish love that kids had, but really it was so much more. It was something much more sinister than someone in love could ever imagine.

"I get it, you didn't choose this life. You didn't choose to have this sadness, and you fucking hate whatever it is that makes you feel this way. And you should. But I know your brother. I know that he is stupidly intelligent and compassionate and sweet and thoughtful and ... and he's so strong. He's like a lion among men. If you are anything like him, even the tiniest fraction, than you have the sort of strength that people can only dream of having. The sort of motivation and determination that people only thought occurred in movies and television shows," I continued, speaking as if to remove my ears from the noises beyond the door, beyond the veil that put two young lovers in worlds apart. And then there was Claude, who was so close to me, and yet ...

"He's also so cautious," I added. "Claude has the biggest heart, but he worries about who to give it to because he doesn't want to get hurt. And yet he gave his heart to you before he could even speak all of those fucking languages he speaks, and not because you're siblings but because he believes in you. So I know that Claude Martin can do anything he sets his mind to, and if he believes in you, then you must be able to as well. He must-"

The door opened.

*

(hey guys remember when I was the worst at updating. Oh wait we are talking about right now whoops. I'm sorry. I'm the worst. Thanks for sticking with me. Also, follow me on tumblr, I'm thehoarderofbeautifulthings so yeah thanks)

-Love Your Favorite Liar <3