Four

"Don't mistake anger with hurt," expresses a third voice which makes Elvina and Madora jump in their skin. 

"Jesus Christ," Madora gasps, frightened. "Is this a thing here, creeping up on people?"

Hailey is standing in the moonlight, not even slightly amused, that withering look still in place. "You left and ruined an already falling apart family. It was unfair."

"Hailey-"

"That's what you did," she cuts Madora off. "You left as if you were the only one who was afraid, suffering? Does she know?" This she directs at Elvina who sighs and shakes her head. 

"Know what?"

"Hailey, it's too soon," Elvina argues.

"Soon? Ten years is too soon?" she scoffs. Looking back at a confused Madora, she explains, "Did you know that Harris had made Jax promise to take care of you if anything ever happened to him? Long before you two even dated, when you thought he hated you, apparently. Jax had promised, no questions asked. And then, he wakes up from a long coma, his best friend is dead and the woman he had promised to keep safe is gone. Do you know how he felt? Of course, you don't know, you weren't there, I was. We were. He was angry at himself, at you, at everyone... he hated himself for years. He was depressed, a paraplegic for the rest of his life if you've noticed the chair, but he worried about you, looked for you, for years, and the stress was killing him. Did you know that your absence, your escape, nearly killed the man I love? Now, you return, look him in the eye and tell him that you're not sorry? How can you be so insensitive?"

"I..." Madora has never been punched but right this moment she knows how it feels like when you get socked. Right in the middle. Your lungs become useless for a moment or so and that moment is the most painful moment you are ever going to experience. "I'm sorry, Hails. I didn't... I didn't know."

"Of course you didn't," she shrugs. "How could you? You weren't there."

"I'm sorry," she whispers, looking away from her best friend. Truth is, she is sorry. For many things. For her friends' pain, for not being there to ease their heartache, for not contacting them for so long, but she cannot possibly be sorry for making that one decision. Not really. It was substantial.

Ugly.

She can see the consequences of her actions on their faces, in their eyes, and it is ugly.

Ugly.

"Your apologies don't solve anything. They won't undo anything. What's happened has happened. We don't want that. Jax and me." And when at her tone, at her choice of words, Madora looks up at her again, she continues. "What we want... what we need is time. We gave you ten years. It's only fair, right? Give us time to believe you're here again for good, that you're our friend again."

Silence. And then, without expecting a reply, before Madora could make herself say anything, she just walks away from the two women sitting on the bench. 

"Huh," Elvina whispers when it is just the two of them again. "I didn't know that." She is not looking at Madora. Her rounded eyes are staring at the floor, surprised. Or maybe shocked. 

"You didn't?" Madora pushes the hair behind her ear. "You live in the same city; you spend a month here together every year, how can you not know? Don't you guys talk?" When the silence stretches out between them and Elvina makes no effort to reply, Madora says, "Oh my God, you don't."

Decay.

Rotten old scars.

Decay.

"Told you this house is haunted," Elvina smiles weakly. 

"But-"

"When everywhere you look you see pain, when everyone you look at is drowned in their own grief and misery and there's nothing you can do, you just don't talk about it. Instead, you let the wounds heal, however badly, and don't pick at the scabs after. It's too much. More than you can handle." She shrugs. "Or so we thought. That's why all these years none of us talked about it, any of it... we didn't want to... we couldn't. I don't know which one it is, but we all just kept it inside and didn't take care of it."

It is not right.

That is not how you deal with it.

Madora looks away at Narnia again. Contemplating. Elvina lets her be, silently sitting there with her. Kirk had taught her many things through the years. The most important one being the fact that you don't hold the pain in, you talk about it. Because if you hold onto it long enough, it gets infected. On the odd occasion, it will even kill you. Madora has held onto it long enough and it is time she starts really talking about it to people who genuinely understand her before it gets infected. 

"For months I couldn't close my eyes to sleep," she decides to change that, to get rid of the decay eating away at her and her friends."After I left. As soon as I closed them, I'd see him dying right in front of me. It was different every time... some nights it was just the second he was shot and that loud bang," she sniffles and takes a deep shaky breath. "Other nights I'm holding him and we're in our bed. Then I look down at him and he's smiling up at me, both of us red with his blood. It... it was a never ending re-run of me losing everything in a second."

"I'm sorry honey," Elvina puts a hand on her shoulder gently. "It must have been tough."

"It was unbearable," she nods. "But then I ended up in the hospital and they told me I was pregnant."

The snowflakes are dancing to the sound of the music conducted by the howling wind. It is gorgeous. The women are shivering and could actually see their breaths before their eyes.

"We better get inside," Elvina stands up, holding out her hand for Madora. "This, I'm sure, is a long story which requires some kind of hot beverage and sitting beside the fire. Come on."

And so they spend the rest of the night, or the early hours of the morning, talking about what has happened during the years they were apart. 

They cry. 

They laugh.

They talk.

Just like friends do.

Just like they used to.