[Every scene and information in here is for narrative purposes only.]
The library was a vast space consisting of two storeys. The ceiling was so high, it felt like an ideal place for Aefia to catch her breath. Today in particular, she felt too alone and too far from people she loved being with—but couldn't anymore.
She took oxycodone. The sense of vertigo was still lingering in her head as she stumbled towards the door.
She clenched her collar tightly as sweat rolled down her forehead—the moment after drugging yourself can be a little disorienting in terms of emotions.
It was a few days since Brittany was killed, that she chose to push herself off her boundaries trying to sought out the help of the shelves. Maybe some sort of a book will catch her eyes. She didn't know about it much, but the characters in the book can sometimes feel more alive than you yourself in reality.
She tried to walk straight, bumping into the frame of the door before shutting it close and placing her foot to the front to step onto the levitating carpet. Her brain made it seem like gravity was non-existent. Walking felt more like a task then a daily routine. As she moved forward, her brain moved backwards.
This was one thing about drugs that she liked. Your brain just slows down to cope to the fast moving reality you don't want to see for the time being. The pain at her cut throat was gone, her nerves forgetting to exist until at least the effects run out.
Her sense of balance was lost, her next step veered her off the center to collapse onto a book shelve—knocking a few off from the other side. The pain was immediately swallowed up by her brain, making her laugh hysterically as she tried to fix herself. Instead, she collided with the opposite bookshelve.
Every time she bounced off them, she would try to walk forward and straighter. But it only resulted in her hitting the walls a little harder each time. By the time she knew it, she was completely drained and found the final obstacle—a solid wall. Instead of how she thought she would be able to bypass it, she hit her forehead hard against it.
Luckily she didn't get injured—her arms separated her between the wall and the shelves—but she couldn't make it any further... Collapsing onto the carpeted ground, onto her side.
To her, the whole experience was a little different.
The room was spinning around on its axis, like a rotisserie. The side walls turned into the floor and ceiling simultaneously while the ceiling and floor turned into the walls. In her mind, she was completely alright, trying to steady herself on her two feet as the room rotated around her.
The feeling was kind of enjoyable though.
This happened all the time. She loved it even when she ended up with unwanted bruises that got even the Empress questioning about it. However, she made sure to not get any on her face, so that she doesn't need to waste more makeup to hide it. She already had enough trying to cover up the visible parts of her arms in case her sleeves ever bunched up during a particular activity or just to comfort herself that she was probably hallucinated.
Afterall, she was gasliting herself—not another person.
Even when, at the end of the day, she would feel bad about it and get depressed. Collapsing against the marble counter—ignoring her foundation and concealer—just to bury her face against her hand and sob out.
It hurt, trying to cover up to make herself think she was alright. Maybe if she wasn't continuously forcing herself into trying to get a better life than her last experience in the same, she won't have gotten into this. Maybe it was the mindset making her think that all this luxury wasn't even enough for her.
However, sometimes she doesn't want to think of it like that—or let alone, think of it at all. That is when she would reach out to her drugs. Forgetting the bottles at the sink while settling at the edge of her bed, laughing until she was breathless on the floor, cluntching her stomach.
Oxycodone was an opioid—and opioids can give you a momentary sence of happiness. It triggers your brain to let out endorphin that makes you feel like whatever you did was rewarding. To her, she needed exactly that. Something to tell her she was trying her best to cope up, that sometimes it is good to just leave those behind and let go of your mind to feel the euphoria that comes with the painkillers.
She was aware that overtime the medicine needed to be increased. Her tolerance was too short-lived and she needed more. Eventually, she became aware of the addiction she pulled on herself.
Because your brain wants to escape the harsh environment as much as possible, you crave more of it over time.
Her worst times would be when she tried to stop taking them. Her bipolar disorder made it harder for her to tell when she was truly anxious and when she was just excited. Even when someone asked her if she knew that her illness was just acting up again, she would be extremely confused and turn absolutely quiet.
The more she took them, the more her anger and frustruation crossed the lines. A normal rage meant tearing down whatever she had near her hand. Hitting herself against the wall if she was upset over her own actions... Or when she was simply done with whoever didn't want to align with her thoughts.
Like how Lewis thought the pills were bad for her, not even understanding she needed them to get enough rest at night—or how George thought she was doing a bad thing trying to take her life.
Those times were entirely out of rage and frustruation. (Though she did regret it now.)
She might as well break the door to let the air in—that was how suffocating it felt.
Soon enough, her last stock of drugs was out and there was no one she could trust enough to get her more. Cedric had a lot of link to the underground local drug dealers, but that didn't mean he never tried to tell her to stop doing those. Apparently, he knew she was trying to kill herself long before she even said anything about it. Her only motive was; even if it meant to kill herself, she would get out of this palace.
But by then, she was stealing more of them from the doctor's chamber at the palace. Lewis was too scared to have another argument with her, he didn't accuse her even after knowing she did what she had done. He wanted stop her personally, but never really got the confidence to face her anymore.
Eventually, she ran out of naxolane too—that chemical that neutralized her overdoses. She would take more drugs when she is already on drugs—forgetting was a common thing for her.
It was that ideal day at the library that she suddenly felt too light on narcotics. Maybe because her grieve and loneliness was too strong. However, moving forward as she took more and more, she realized there must be a far bigger reason to it.
The pain at the back of her throat wasn't because of the cut. But because she was surpressing her grieve too much for the medicine to cover up. Even as she injested more and more, her airways won't let the suffocation out. Her heart was beating too fast—she could stab it to slow it down out of determination. Her body temperature was rising, the pain at her stomach suddenly rose too much for her to bare.
That was the first open sob she let out. It was an echo that reached up into the ceiling and then vibrated back towards her. Her knees moved up to her chest as she stayed hurdled on the ground. Her fingers moving towards a book that was laying right beside her head. If drugs couldn't cure her, then at least a specific line in the book would.
But rather, she found it to be a book that Ms. Avry once read it to the whole class. Just because she felt it was a very resonating one—not a competition material of course. Among those lines she had said, one of them caught her attention the most.
It was a quote from Robert Frost.
"In three words I can sum up everything I have learned about life: it goes on."
It was a brief moment that Aefia's mind entirely went silent. It was hard to describe, but she thought about it for a few seconds. Whether she came to the competition was a bad thing or a good... Her life just went on. Her eyes lifted from her papers and looked up towards her teacher's face. It was privilage that a woman like her stumbled into her life to say something like that.
Then there was another one.
"If you can't fly then run, if you can't run then walk, if you can't walk then crawl, but whatever you do you have to keep moving forward." — Martin Luther King Jr.
It just happened to be that a collection of her dead teacher's book stumbles onto her steps as she was suffering from an overdose. Her mind might be hazy, but she could read a few lines at most. Her fingers flipped through the pages until she stopped completely, having a hard time filling her lungs with air.
She started to gasp loudly, her fingers clawing into the carpet as she started seeing things. Until her consciousness almost let go, a rustle of expensive imperial silk dragged across the floor towards her.
Her eyes were half-lidded, unfocused. Until she realized...
It was not what she thought it was. She had accidentally taken a lot of fentanyl instead. She only had two bottles. How could she have messed up?
Alveolar hemorrhage...
As she tried to lift her head up again, a thin line of blood fell from her mouth to the ground. She started feeling the fear of death a little too late. But at least she had a smile at her face.
Before long, just as she shut her eyes, the empress crouched down to lean over her fallen body.
"Aefia?" Her palms rest flat against Aefia's unmoving shoulders. Her voice was very thin, strained and low. A little bit more force radiated from her fingertips as she flipped Aefia onto her back. A small gasp left her mouth as she lifted her head onto her lap, checking for the fading pulse.
Without even thinking, she pulled out the naloxane from her hidden pocket and used the syringe to inject her with it. Now was to wait for three minutes.
Luckily, she knew something was wrong when Aefia was seen heading towards the library without a sense of pain when she stumbled her toes multiple times. The suspicion hit her that she may be on drugs and immediately reached out to grab a dose from the shelves in the medical chamber.
Immediately, Aefia's body convulsed and she started hunching over her stomach.
She was half-conscious only.
Her breathing was restored only for a mere few seconds before suddenly, her heart started slamming against her ribs. She let out a cough, spitting out blood as the pain caused her body to tremble.
The Empress looked up into the ceiling, letting out a sigh of relief. Her eyes caught the sight of a particular artwork on the ceiling. A mother holding a new-born daughter away from a crowd who wanted the child to be executed. The mother had a burning dress and acid being thrown at her for protecting the daughter, but she still didn't stop trying to save her.
They say sons are the only reliable child. Meanwhile, daughters can be much stronger if only they were given the allowance to access the required resources. In fact, the mother were once a daughter too.
She looked down at Aefia, feeling a little motivated from the painting. Her arms immediately wrapped around her shoulders as she kissed her cheek, telling her to slowly get up. Luckily she knew how to take care of the rest of the drugs in her brain. The worst part... Aefia didn't know it was the Empress who helped her come back from death's door.
For the next few days, she looked after Aefia like her own birthed daughter, for once. And as she did, she realized that Aefia felt like her real daughter from another universe. Like there is an alternate dimension where she was trying to revive the child who came from her own womb.
Sleep was a battle fought to just keep an eye on Aefia—in fear that she might be in intense pain when she was in a deep sleep of her own.
During the days too, their cats started to realize that a member of the family was missing.
One day, as the Empress was changing Aefia's IV tube, the white furry creature brought one of her own kittens and climbed onto the bed to lay it next to her head. It mewed softly against her ears, unaware Aefia had been unconscious for days now.
The Empress watched with a close observation when the mother cat herself was trying to tell her something. Maybe that being the mother of her own kittens, she was still trying to take care of a human's child as well.
The cat rubbed its head against Aefia's jaw, moving upwards to lick her cheek and then also taking care of her own baby at the same time.
The moment stretched on before the Empress climbed onto bed beside Aefia, propping her head up on her elbow while using her fingers to run them against her midnight black roots.
Sensing her presence, the cat took her kitten and walked away.
Silence returned as the room door was left ajar, but she didn't care enough. Her only concern laid on the time that Aefia would finally open her eyes.
Without any hesitation of her own past actions, she leaned down to kiss her forehead. Rubbing her thumb along her cheek before pulling the blanket up to her chin to keep her from feeling cold from the early winter temperatures.
Her eyes stayed glued on her pale face, staring for a long time before moving to the IV tube. A single sentence escaped her mouth.
"I just don't know how... I am supposed to fight you from trying to kill yourself again."