AnimeCon Harem 14: Stephanie's Goodbye (Patreon)

Stephanie’s resolve was a flame guttering in rainstorm gales as the raw emotion of both Kelly and Emily crashed over her. She knew she couldn’t stay with them. Enduring the empathic trauma right now almost brought her to her knees in a complete breakdown—as much as she never wanted to part with them, it wasn’t a storm she could weather through for much longer.

The frigid rain scatter of Emily’s feelings was heavy with frustration and fear, and pelted across her mind on an angry wind. The red-hot star metal planted amid the earth steamed with grief, and an enormous split had appeared where Kelly’s psyche grew brittle. Stephanie felt desperate to help them. She knew that she needed to be the warmth to sap the cold sting from Emily’s blue, to be the healing heat that mended the cracking and flaking meteor. Her own pink dreamscape representations were just as out of control, however. Fire refused to take hold where she needed it to, and it seared in anguish where she didn’t want it, without any tangible way to direct her painful conflagration into what would actually help them endure this.

The horrible burn of suffering began to scorch and char the naked branches that reached out to meet her, and—

Rebecca slowly pulled Stephanie back from the crushing hug she’d shared with Kelly and Emily, and they finally managed to let go of each other. Kelly was all but baring her teeth in a bitter grimace as tears streamed down her cheeks, and Emily was still wracked with small sobs. Breaking close contact seemed to jar each of them up out of the dreamscape where their emotions seemed to manifest most blatantly, and Stephanie hiccuped, still crying as Rebecca’s gentle hands combed through her hair and tried to calm her down.

That—that was. That was not smart, Stephanie admitted to herself with another small, helpless whimper. It—me, my thing. Getting up that close to them for goodbyes—dumb. Stupid. STUPID. We’re, we’re each so torn up in our own ways, and then I feel ALL of that, and then when we’re holding each other and point blank, I, I just pass on that MAGNIFIED mess back to them. When that’s the LAST thing we all need right now.

Even now, her proximity instead to Rebecca was eating away at the tunic-clad girl, Stephanie’s furnace of despair and guilt was immolating the bark from Rebecca’s dreamscape body, fierce heat blackening her into charcoal and ash. Stephanie tried to pull away, because she was hurting Rebecca, she could feel how much she was hurting her, but Rebecca remained stoic to the pain and wouldn’t let her go.

“Chloe—” Stephanie finally managed to gasp out between sobs. “R-rebecca, please—jush. Put me, me next to Chl—to, to Christine. For a moment. I-I’m, I’m so sorrry—”

Rebecca shuffled her forward, saying something she couldn’t quite hear, and though blinded by tears and frantically trying to blink and then smear the wetness away with the back of her hand, Stephanie managed to awkwardly step in the direction her friend was guiding her.

The shielding silence of Christine’s power cut through Stephanie’s mind like a scalpel.

The sudden sensory deprivation was beyond disorienting, and for a long, horrible moment where Stephanie fought to even breath she imagined parts of herself had been cut away, divided off from her by the mirror edge of silver. The staccato slap of rainfall across her thoughts was just all of the sudden gone, the blue was not there. The flame-wreathed wooden limbs supporting her, gone. The familiar weight of Kelly’s meteor—gone. The overturned earth she had imagined represented Brian wasn’t even there.

Pink flame sputtered in the darkness, alone.

Okay, Stephanie told herself. Okay. Okay.

The overwhelming onslaught of everyone bleeding into her had grown to be violent, suffocating, unbearable—but also abruptly having everything torn away was in some ways a different kind of terrible that needed some adjusting to.

Okay. I’m fine. This is me. This is JUST me, Stephanie trembled in the darkness, fighting to regain her calm. All of the rest—everyone else. This is me, and that all is them. I love them. But, when it’s crazy, it-it blurs. Where all of it’s thrown against each other, into each other, and we all start to magnify each other’s emotions. Gets so hard to tell where they all stop and I begin. But, this is it here. This is JUST me.

The flame of a lone Stephanie was not at all impressive when compared to her flame when it burned across the dreamscape with everyone. She felt tiny and insignificant, a single candle that burned hot and high with her own worries and fears, but a single candle all the same.

Okay. Okay.

Running her fingertips across to staunch the last of her tears, Stephanie opened up aching eyes and took in sight of the hospital waiting room once again. Christine was right in front of her now with how Rebecca had maneuvered her across the room, and the beautiful young woman with the silver hair appeared to be trying hard not to lean back away from them as they encroached in on her personal space.

“Sorry,” Stephanie mumbled with a small voice.

She cast a guilty glance up at Kelly and Emily—the two were now hugging each other and crying, but just in a small way with occasional sniffles. Nothing like the magnified suffering Stephanie had been inflicting on everyone. The whole thought of that, the very idea was exhausting, and knowing that she’d once again let her powers get away from her and become a liability to her friends, it just hurt.

“Sorry,” Stephanie said again, feeling listless and empty.

Empty didn’t even begin to describe what it was like standing near Christine, and all of those feelings just disappearing in an instant made this moment feel impossible and unreal. Disconnected, after being tapped into everyone’s inner selves and having their experiences entwined in an intimate—if gut-wrenching—way. Being exposed to everyone’s suffering was horrifying, but the fact that they could share it still felt meaningful, and even though she knew she wasn’t strong enough to withstand it all… a large part of her hated herself for pulling away. At this point, not feeling their pain felt like she was betraying them, on some level.

“Shh-shh-shh, you’re fine,” Rebecca assured her. “You’re fine, we’re all fine. It’s okay.”

The brown-haired girl produced a handkerchief from somewhere on the belt of her tunic and was already dabbing at Stephanie’s face. The dead zone around Christine seemed spread out from her at a radius of three-and-a-half or perhaps four feet, and Rebecca had positioned herself just on the edge, seemingly sensing the deadening field with her own measure of charm-influenced magic. When inside, neither of the other girls felt quite real to Stephanie. She clutched onto Rebecca’s tunic, feeling but not feeling, and had to remind herself that before this weekend, she’d never been privy to anyone else’s emotional state.

Frightening, how quickly I came to rely on it, Stephanie thought to herself with a glum smile. I—do I maybe have asperger’s syndrome? I can’t help but think that, when the connection to everyone goes from on to completely off, like that.

Looking up at Rebecca, I can GUESS that she’s caring and concerned, but I don’t KNOW anymore. Just seconds ago, I KNEW what everyone was feeling, completely knew. Suddenly NOT completely knowing for sure lets in those little slivers of doubt and you start to second-guess even the obvious. It’s REBECCA—of course she cares. Of course she’s concerned.

“Sorry,” Stephanie spoke up a little louder, this time addressing Emily and Kelly. “I—I should have realized that would, would get out of hand. I needed t-to hold you, to um, hug the both of you, an-and, I couldn’t even stop myself from… you know. Reaching out to connect all the feelings.”

“Steph, it’s fine,” Kelly shook her head. “It was—I don’t know. I can’t say it was nice, but it was. It was real. It was very real.”

“It’s like I just got hit by a truck,” Emily groaned, producing a weak, wincing smile to show she was mostly kidding. “I mean. Not in a bad way. Just. That was a lot.”

“Yeahh,” Stephanie sighed, sagging against Rebecca. “That was a lot. Sorry.”

“No, s’okay,” Emily laughed, wiping her face on the sleeve of the borrowed hoodie and blinking rapidly. “It’s—yeah, it was real. This whole… everything is a lot. So, that was super real. Let’s just uh, let’s do that again when we’re not all… having our own mental breakdowns?”

“Yeah,” Kelly gave them a sober nod. “We will. Just—I think we should all go. There’s never ever gonna be an easy way to say goodbye. Not after all we’ve gone through together, not with—yeah. And, hah, I think we’re probably runnin’ out of time. Before it’s dangerous, here.”

“Okay,” Stephanie said. She felt crushed. She simply didn’t want to separate from her new friends, not now, not ever, and her eyes began watering all over again. “I. Yeah. Love you guys.”

“I love you,” Kelly looked into her eyes across the vast, impossible distance of their emotions no longer touching and Stephanie almost threw herself forward out of Christine’s nullifying field.

She needed to feel them again, but she knew if she took a single step in that direction it would be all but impossible to extricate her mind from them anytime soon. The connection was too alluring, addictive. Without Brian, without Kelly, without Emily and Rebecca and even Chloe—Stephanie felt like she was tiny, she was simply an aberrant lonely speck of light in the vast gulf of nothingness.

“I love you,” Stephanie choked. “Both of you. I’m sorry.”

“Love you,” Emily squeaked out. “Megan—take care of her. Please.”

Megan? Stephanie looked over to see her heavyset friend standing off to the side.

I’d—I’d forgotten she was even there, Stephanie chastised herself. I mean. I know she arrived with Rebecca, but. She was never… HERE with us, she wasn’t connected. It felt like she wasn’t real. She’s not a winding river of turmoil, she’s not a fallen star that’s impacted my life. She’s not this endless growth of strength or even a dead zone of nothingness. She’s just…MEGAN.

It was hard not to feel her pink flicker with baleful shame. Megan was a great friend, Megan was the one who’d pushed her to even come out to the convention in the first place. To cosplay. To meet people—Megan had actually been the one to shove her into Brian in the first place! It was mortifying to realize how much the charm power had begun to detach the new Stephanie from the old Stephanie. Those who were in the charm pact with her bared their souls to her, they’d made love, while Megan hadn’t. Megan was simply Megan, and at some point she’d stopped feeling like a real person to Stephanie simply because she didn’t have a magical conduit into the girl’s feelings.

Which isn’t fair of me, Stephanie thought, hardening her resolve to take a long break from all the magic and figure herself out again.

“Yeah, just,” Kelly paused. “One last hug? Please? Inside Chloe’s shadow, if we have to. I—I don’t want to put you through all of that again. I, I just want to hold you.”

They glanced up towards Christine, who simply offered them an indifferent shrug.

“Go for it?” Christine said, returning their looks with an unblinking red stare. “Sorry. Don’t mean to seem flippant. I guess. I see that there’s a whole lot going on, and all.”

“Uh, thanks,” Kelly said.

Kelly and Emily stepped over to join Stephanie, and Rebecca in one last big hug, and then Stephanie motioned Megan forward, to.

“...The fuck?” Emily mumbled. “Definitely felt something like… wrong. The second we got in near Chloe. No offense.”

“Sorry?” Christine shrugged again, but that was simply cause for Rebecca to tug her in to be an unwilling—and mostly unwelcome—part of the group hug.

The moment was nice, but it was also flat while under Christine’s dead zone. Stephanie squeezed everyone tight and tried to enjoy a moment in simplicity. She already missed them all terribly. Post-con depression was going to be devastating, let alone her worry about Brian and creeps and all of her many, many anxieties for what the future would hold. She’d grown a lot over the course of a single weekend, and she knew she was strong enough to handle everything.

Just, it was going to suck.

The girls separated in a daze and their group slowly dissolved towards the exit doors. More words were exchanged, promises made and warnings repeated, but Stephanie was already deaf to them... she began crying again immediately upon stepping out of the safe shelter of Christine’s magic mirror. With anguish and regret, she let Megan take her hand and allowed herself to follow along behind the girl. Away from the others.

The candlelight of pink deep inside of her shrunk as the sorrowed mental impressions of the others grew distant, but Stephanie’s light did not extinguish.

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/// This one was a lot! Stephanie and Megan exit the story, barring maybe an epilogue entry that will take place much later on. Stephanie grew the most throughout this story, but also I wanted to establish that she's a little terrified of the dependence she's formed. Falling in love this hard and this fast was always going to make saying goodbyes overly emotional. Most aggrieving--she hasn't seen Brian again, yet.

Which was intentional, because Brian in intensive care is NOT presently in a good state, Kelly would think it irresponsible and cruel to put Stephanie through seeing THAT when a magic wand is potentially on its way to magically mend him a bit.

Possibly might write up a small Brian POV where he has a dreamlike experience in the dreamscape... might skip on it. I also don't want to lay it on too thick with emotionally charged POV from the girls after... the past ten or so chaps have had that dialed up to eleven, so if I skip the Brian bit we might just go to CREEPS. After writing CREEPS I will probably do a palette cleanser and write some Christmastime bits for RE: TT.

Will fix links and consolidate chapters sometime today or tomorrow, I know I've fallen behind on that again. Lot going on and want to make sure writing comes first!