Chapter 36
DOVE
It’s hard to go back to normal after your sense of “normal” is shredded into a million pieces and sent scattering to the four winds.
There are still so many fucking questions. So much pain and confusion.
But Bane is right: the world keeps turning. We keep breathing. We choose to live over the opposite, day after day, until it’s not a conscious choice you have to make anymore.
You just get up, try your best, and keep on living.
So that’s what I do.
It’s not like I’ve got nothing on my plate. There’s the ongoing investigation, which is terrifying. But I’ve got the best lawyers in New York—arguably some of the best on the planet—in my corner. That's comforting.
Taylor Crown is a boss. She’s tough, super smart, and not fucking around one bit when it comes to my case. Fumi Yamaguchi, AKA the First Lady of New York, prides herself on having “pro-level cunt energy” against opposition counsel.
I like them. A lot.
There’s also ballet, and the additional hours I’m putting in to be ready for the gala showcase, especially after I missed two freaking weeks in the studio. God, I was sore the next morning after my first day back.
And then there’s my mental state. The waking up in the middle of the night in a cold sweat, trying to make myself remember details that I simply can’t.
Did I have anything to do with the carriage house explosion that could have killed Felicity? Did I slit Lorenzo Cielo's throat?
It helps that when I do wake up to those nightmare thoughts, it’s in Bane’s arms. I have no idea what I’d do if I didn’t have him to hold onto in all of this.
Dr. Turov has been a huge help, too. I’m seeing her three times a week, and we’re slowly ramping back my meds.
I don’t know if it’s a placebo effect or not, but it truly does feel like it’s helping. I have a clearer sense of real versus imagined, almost like someone’s finally cleaned my eyeglasses properly so I see the world with clarity.
That clarity is…jarring, though. It’s unsettling when I look at events in hindsight through a less medicated lens, especially when I talk through those events with Dr. Turov.
It’s a tough pill to swallow, the idea that the attacks you’ve barely escaped from over the last few months might not be real.
Dr. Turov have talked about both those incidents. The second one, where I was sure I was being chased, was probably a so-called “persecutory delusion”.
It's relatively harmless compared to the first incident involving the bus.
That one’s a bit more serious.
Dr. Turov says that could be a cross between suppressed suicidal ideation and “dissociative self-harm displacement”.
In layman’s terms, I’m insane, harbor a desire to kill myself, and imagined a scenario where an unseen force pushed me into oncoming traffic.
But the scarier reality could be that I threw myself in front of that bus and then sold myself a story invented by my subconscious in order to cover its own tracks.
…Yeah.
It's either that, or someone really did try to push me in front of a bus. Except there’s no security footage showing that, nor did the bus driver see anything except me suddenly hurtling forward in front of his vehicle.
Again, this is where I truly don’t know what I’d do without Bane. Because not only is he there for me—holding me when the nightmares come, calming me when I start spiraling—he also doesn’t patronize me about any of it.
He’s just there, in every way I need.
Thank you, Lark.
Thank you for leading me to him.